Occasional Cooks: bread and butter pudding

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Via bbcgoodfood.com

So this thread was meant to be cooking in general, but it turns out I am far more attached to baking than cooking.

Bread and butter pudding is another stand-by for me - a very simple base recipe, endlessly variable. Can be thrown together in a trice, or gussied up with fancy ingredients.

Bread and butter pudding is not bread pudding, which contains loads of spices and dried fruit, it's a bit plainer, with more focus on the custard rather than the flavouring.

I don't even have a recipe to link to on this on, I make it from memory, from my mum's hand-written recipe book. 

• 300 ml thickened cream (not sure how this would be sold in the US, it is 35 per cent fat content)
• 600 ml milk
• 2 eggs
• 100 gm sugar
• vanilla
• stale-ish white bread (stale bread absorbs the custard better than fresh; if your bread is too fresh, dry it out in the oven)
• butter
• sultanas

Butter the inside of a baking dish.

Cut the crusts off the bread, spread with butter, then layer the bread in your dish, with sultanas sprinkled throughout and on top.

Warm the milk, cream and vanilla in a saucepan; you don't want it to boil, just to the point it starts bubbling.

Beat the eggs together with the sugar until smooth. This doesn't need anything vigorous, just do it by hand with a whisk.

Slowly mix the warm milk mixture into the egg - do it in two or three batches so the eggs don't cook. 

Once combined, pour over the bread and allow it to soak for as long as you can - an hour is good, longer is fine. You may want to put a weighted plate on top, so that the bread is pushed into the custard.

Bake in a medium oven for about 40 minutes.

This classic version instantly puts me back at the dinner table as a kid. It even tastes good cold!

Some variations I've tried - use hot cross buns, croissants, brioche. Spread some jam on the bread (and leave out the sultanas). Add some dark chocolate, or some blobs of nutella (especially good with croissants).

You can even (so I've heard) make it savoury - leave out the sugar, add cheese, spring onions, some cooked bacon (this has a specific name that I am blanking on right now...).